The Professional (17 page)

“How was the marriage?”

He shrugged.

“She was hot enough,” he said. “And she tried to be nice to me. I mean, I was not only her husband, I was her income, you know?”

“She still, ah, dance?”

“No, I wouldn’t tolerate that when she was married to me.”

“Propriety,” I said.

“Whatever. But the thing I always knew was she didn’t like me. It was . . . she liked to fuck me, but she resented the rest of it. And man, did she have a temper. Come a point it would blow and she couldn’t control it.”

“That why you divorced?” I said.

“Nope.”

“Why’d you divorce?” I said.

“She was fucking other people,” he said. “I cut her loose.”

I nodded.

“You know where she went next?” I said.

“Nope.”

“You get married again?”

“Yep. Nice woman. I didn’t meet her here. Two daughters. Nice house in Andover,” he said.

“Your wife understand the arrangement with the strippers?” I said.

Boley grinned at me.

“Don’t ask,” he said. “Don’t tell.”

The music stopped. The kid on the pole stopped dancing and, wearing only a G-string, walked unself-consciously off the stage.

“At night the G-string goes,” Boley said. “But I ain’t wasting it in the middle of the afternoon on a couple shitkickers in down vests.”

“It’s a hard life,” I said.

“It is, and most of them are too stupid to do anything else,” he said.

“Hard for Beth,” I said.

“Hard for everybody,” Boley said. “You need to be tough if you’re gonna get anywhere.”

“And smart,” I said.

“Yeah,” Boley said. “That helps.”

“You think Beth was smart?” I said.

“She was tough, okay,” he said. “But she didn’t know much.”

“You can be smart and not know much,” I said.

He nodded and drank some Coke.

“Smartest broad I ever fucked,” he said.

And that in itself must be some kind of fame.

THIS ONE GOT Quirk’s interest. He stood with Belson and me, looking down at the body of Estelle, facedown near the edge of the Frog Pond in the Common.

“According to the contents of her purse,” Belson said, “her name is Estelle Gallagher. And she works at Pinnacle, where she is a certified physical trainer.”

“Appears to be the same Estelle,” I said.

She had been shot by someone who had apparently put the gun right up against the back of her head. She’d been shot twice. The second time probably as she lay facedown on the ground. One of the bullets had exited her face somewhere in the area of her nose, and it rendered a visual ID problematic. The three of us looked down at her in the harsh light of the crime-scene lamps. It made everything bright enough so that the crime-scene people could scoot about with cameras and tape measures and brushes and powders, and various kits containing nothing I understood. Several Boston cops, of lesser rank than Quirk, were going over the area foot by foot.

“Estelle Gallagher,” I said. “Never knew her last name.”

“Don’t look Irish,” Quirk said.

“No disgrace to it,” I said.

“Not now,” Quirk said.

He turned and walked to where a uniformed guy was standing with Gary and Beth. I followed him. Beth was holding on to Gary’s arm with both of hers. She was crying.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Quirk said.

“It’s terrible,” Beth said.

Gary looked dazed.

“Do you have any thoughts on who or why?” Quirk said.

“No,” Beth said, and cried some more.

“You, sir?” Quirk said to Gary.

He shook his head slowly.

“No one had any reason to do this to Estelle,” he said.

His voice was flat and not very loud. He looked as if Beth’s clutch on his arm was weighing him down.

“She lived with you two,” Quirk said pleasantly.

“Yes,” Beth said. “She was a friend.”

“She was my girlfriend,” Gary said in the same affectless voice. “Been my girlfriend a long time.”

Quirk didn’t say anything.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” he said. “Either of you?”

They looked at each other as if to compare notes.

“This morning,” Gary said. Beth nodded. “Before she went to the club. I was having some breakfast with her. Beth was still in, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, still sniffling. “But I heard you talking. I actually last saw her last night before I went to bed.”

Quirk nodded and looked at Belson.

“Frank,” he said. “We got a time of death yet?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, get a statement from these folks, and when the time of death is established, see if they got an alibi.”

“Alibi?” Beth said. “You think one of us would do this?”

“Course not,” Quirk said. “But it would be comforting to know you couldn’t have.”

He jerked his head at me and walked away.

When we were far enough away to talk, he said, “What’s this fucking threesome?”

“You may have nailed it,” I said.

“A fucking threesome?”

“Yeah.”

“And they all knew about each other?”

“I think so,” I said.

“I’m not sure any of the nuns at Saint Anthony’s told me about this,” he said.

“Probably not,” I said.

“First her husband, now her, ah, roommate. I was this Eisenhower guy, I’d be a little careful walking around with old Beth.”

“Or she with him,” I said.

“Or she with him,” Quirk said. “Tell me what you know.”

Which I did.

WE IN A MARRIOTT HOTEL,” Hawk said. “In Burlington fucking Massachusetts.”

We were in a new restaurant called Summer Winter.

“Susan says it’s great,” I said.

Susan smiled at him and nodded. Hawk looked around the room.

“Don’t see no brothers,” Hawk said.

“I know,” Susan said.

They grinned at each other. Sometimes they communicated on levels even I didn’t quite get. Hawk looked at me.

“What you know from the po-lice,” he said.

“Gun killed Estelle was the same as the gun that killed Jackson,” I said.

“Thing keeps getting more incestuous,” Hawk said. “Don’t it.”

“It do,” I said.

The waitress brought our drink order. She was pleasant to all of us. Though she was, perhaps, a little extra-pleasant to Hawk.

Hawk sipped from his margarita.

“Beth and Eisenhower got an alibi?” he said.

I nodded.

“They were together at some sort of fund-raiser cocktail party at The Langham Hotel,” I said. “Twenty people saw them.”

“Too bad,” Hawk said.

“You think they’re involved?” Susan said.

“Ah is just a poor simple bad guy,” Hawk said, “trying to get along. Ask the dee-tective.”

“Who else is there?” I said.

“Couldn’t it be a party or parties unknown?” Susan said.

“Sure,” I said. “But on the assumption of same gun, same shooter, they would need to be connected to both Estelle and Jackson.”

“They have alibis for both,” Susan said.

“Rock-solid,” I said. “For both.”

Susan guzzled nearly a full gram of her martini.

“Suppose,” I said, “that someone you knew was murdered yesterday evening, and the cops asked you for an alibi.”

“I washed my hair,” Susan said. “Took a bath, put on some night cream, and got in bed with Pearl and watched a movie on HBO.”

“And if they asked what movie, and could you remember the plot?”

“I could tell them that, but the movie has been running all month on my cable system,” Susan said.

“So Pearl is basically your alibi,” I said.

“Hawk?” I said.

“There be a young woman . . .” Hawk said.

“Of course there was,” I said.

I drank some of my short scotch and soda.

“Last night I had a couple of cocktails,” I said. “Made supper, ate it, and watched the first half of the Celtics game before I fell asleep.”

“So you don’t even have Pearl,” Susan said.

“I don’t,” I said.

“So you’re saying that people often don’t have any way to prove where they were of an evening, and these people have two ironclad alibis.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Most people,” Susan said. She looked at Hawk. “Except maybe for the man with the golden lance, here . . .”

“Black opal,” Hawk said.

Susan nodded.

“Except for the man with the black-opal lance,” she said.

“Most people could go days at a time with no alibi except for whomever they live with.”

“And,” Hawk said. “If they both under suspicion . . .”

“The alibi is suspect,” Susan said.

“Sorta,” I said.

“You think they hired a third party?” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“Both of them?” Susan said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Beth surely could not have escaped such a childhood unscathed,” Susan said.

“Nobody do,” Hawk said.

“She had somebody do Jackson,” I said. “She’d get his money.”

“She have somebody do Estelle,” Susan said. “Beth would get Eisenhower.”

“She don’t get Jackson’s money until somebody kills him,” Hawk said. “How’d she pay.”

I looked at him for a moment.

“Oh,” Hawk said. “Yeah.”

“What?” Susan said.

“She started out broke,” I said. “How’d she pay her way this far?”

Susan was silent for a moment.

Then she said, “Oh. The, ah, barter system.”

Our food came, and we ate some. Susan looked at Hawk.

“Well,” she said.

Hawk nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”

“Thank you,” Susan said.

She looked at me.

“So if it were Beth, and if she were hiring somebody to kill her husband, and Estelle, and taking it out in trade, who would she hire? Who does she know that she could hire?”

“Eisenhower’s been in jail,” I said. “Husband was on both sides of legitimate. She might know a lot of people, or she might know one who could broker the deal.”

“She know Zel and Boo,” Hawk said. “She know Tony Marcus.”

“Ty-Bop?” I said.

“He don’t freelance,” Hawk said.

“Not even for love?” Susan said.

Hawk smiled at her.

“Ty-Bop don’t know nothing ’bout love.”

“Junior?” I said.

“Ain’t a shooter,” Hawk said.

“Probably knows how,” I said.

“Maybe. You looking in that direction, I think you got to look at Tony. He tell Ty-Bop to shoot you. Ty-Bop will shoot you. He tell Junior to break your back. Junior will break your back. But gun work is Ty-Bop. And strong-arm is Junior. He don’t ask one to do the other man specialty. And they don’t do anything unless Tony tells them to. It’s a matter of respect.”

“You understand that?” Susan said to me.

“Yes,” I said.

“But if Tony wanted Ty-Bop to shoot someone for love?”

“Ty-Bop do it,” Hawk said.

“Does Tony know about love?” Susan said.

“Loves his daughter,” Hawk said.

“So he’s a possibility,” Susan said.

“Yep,” I said.

“But if you rule him out, you also rule out Ty-Bop and Junior,” Susan said.

“Yep.”

“How about this man Zel?” Susan said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Boo?”

“Hard to imagine Beth seducing any of these people,” I said.

“Remember how far she’s come, and how she got here,” Susan said.

“You’re saying she could?”

“If she needed to,” Susan said.

“Could you?” I said.

“If I needed to,” Susan said.

“Egad,” I said.

TONY MARCUS CAME into my office wearing a double-breasted camel-hair coat and a Borsalino hat. Ty Bop jangled in beside him and stood not quite motionless near the door.

“Arnold say you wanted to see me,” Tony said.

He unbuttoned his coat, took his hat off, and put it on my desk, and sat down in front of me.

“I didn’t know you still made house calls,” I said.

“In the neighborhood,” Tony said. “Going to have lunch with my daughter.”

“Give her my best,” I said.

“Sure,” Tony said. “What you want?”

“You know Chet Jackson got whacked,” I said.

Tony nodded.

“Couple days ago a woman named Estelle Gallagher got clipped with the same gun killed Jackson,” I said.

Tony nodded.

“You keep track,” I said.

“I do,” Tony said.

“They’re both connected with Gary Eisenhower,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

Ty-Bop was studying the picture of Pearl that stood on top of a file cabinet just to the left of Susan’s. I would have studied Susan had I been he, but Ty-Bop was mysterious.

“And Beth Jackson,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You had any dealings with them since Jackson’s office?” I said.

“You think one of them done the killings?” Tony said.

“They both have solid alibis,” I said. “For both killings.”

Tony smoothed his mustache with his left hand and nodded.

“Remarkable,” he said.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“So you figured one or both contracted it out,” Tony said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“And you figure who they know might do it?”

“Yep.”

“And you thought of me,” Tony said.

“One possibility,” I said.

Tony sat back in his chair and smoothed his mustache again. After a while he smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “We talked.”

“How’d she get hold of you?”

“She called,” Tony said. “Talk with Arnold.”

“How’d she know where to call?” I said.

“Her husband had a number,” he said.

“So the cops must have stopped by,” I said.

“They did,” Tony said. “I’m used to cops. Didn’t tell them nothing. They didn’t know nothing. They went away.”

“What did Beth want?”

“She say she saw me in her husband’s office that day and she thought I was very ‘interesting.’ ” Tony grinned. “Say she want to see me.”

“And?”

“And I say sure,” Tony said.

“So you did,” I said.

“Yep. Fucked her about sixteen times.”

“Nice for you,” I said.

Tony grinned.

“She enthusiastic,” he said.

“But you didn’t elope,” I said.

“Nope, after we been fucking for a week or so, she say she need a favor.”